What the Case of Jonathan Pollard Tells Us about Zionism's Worldview

Jonathan Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel, walked out of a North Carolina prison in November after serving 30 years. As a Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard passed suitcases filled with classified documents to Israeli handlers in the mid-1980s. He received parole on a life sentence.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Pollard's release saying that he "had long hoped this day would come." He noted that he had "raised Jonathan's case for years" with several American presidents. Upon his release, Pollard was hailed as a hero by many in Israel, and was warmly embraced by many of Israel's friends in the U.S., particularly those who have worked actively for his release and argued that, despite his own guilty plea, he was, somehow, a "political prisoner" and the victim of religious discrimination.

What Pollard did is not open to question. He was working as a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy when he was recruited by the Israeli Defense Ministry in the mid- 1980s. He delivered a vast amount of military intelligence to Israel, including satellite photos. Among the tens of thousands of secret documents that Pollard stole for the Israelis was the National SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) Requirements List, which revealed which communications channels of which military powers, in which regions, the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting, in what order of priority. It would indicate to the reader where and what actions the U.S. Military might take.

Damage beyond Calculation

Joseph diGenova, the prosecutor who handled the Pollard case, said that the damage he did to U.S. Security was "beyond calculation." Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Leeper declared:,"The defendant has admitted that he sold Israel a volume of classified materials 10 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet." The U.S. Government said that the damage resulting from Pollard's spying exceeded that caused by Ronald W. Pelton, a former NSA employee, who was convicted in 1986 of selling classified electronic surveillance secrets to the Soviet Union. "Pelton compromised specific intelligence gathering methods in a specific area, and damaged the U.S. position relative to the Soviet Union," the prosecutors said. They added that, "Pollard compromised a breadth and volume of classified information as great as any reported espionage case and adversely affected U.S. interests vis-a-vis numerous countries, including, potentially, the Soviet Union."

Several U.S. intelligence analysts believe that documents stolen by Pollard were handed over to Moscow by Soviet moles within the Israeli intelligence service. Neil Livingstone of Georgetown University stated: "There's no question that Mossad's penetrated. A lot of what Pollard stole wasn't related to Israeli security. Israel is a great trader of intelligence. To get an advantage someplace, they get something someone else wants and they create an indebtedness."

In his book, The Samson Option, former New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh said that Pollard was an Israeli agent for four years, not 17 months as originally believed, and also stated that Pollard passed even more secret data than the prosecutors realized: "The Israeli who was his case officer in Washington was actually the officer responsible for aiming Israel's missiles at the Soviet Union and much of the data Mr. Pollard provided was used to that end." Hersh said that the idea behind the strategic doctrine was that Soviet intelligence agents would learn of the nuclear threat and that, as a result, Soviet leaders would limit their military aid to Arab allies in time of war."

Passing Information to Moscow

Hersh charged that Pollard gave Israel top secret U.S. intelligence on the Soviet Union and that Israeli Prime Minister Shamir approved passing on some of the most important information to Moscow: "The nuclear targeting data supplied by Pollard included top secret American intelligence on the location of Soviet military targets, as well as specific data on the Soviet means for protecting those targets, by concealment and hardening of the sites … Some of the most important documents were retyped and sanitized by Israeli intelligence officials and then made available to the Soviet Union as a gesture of Israeli goodwill, at the specific instruction of Yitzhak Shamir …" An anonymous senior U.S. intelligence official was quoted by Hersh as saying, "There were losses of human and technical intelligence capability inside the Soviet Union attributed to Pollard."

Contrary to claims by Pollard supporters that he had stolen only classified documents dealing with Arab military strength in order to help Israel stave off an invasion and that none of his actions harmed American security, the facts tell a far different story. M.F. "Spike" Bowman, a senior counterintelligence officer who was working the Pollard case, has since confirmed that the item in question was a NSA manual called RASIN, short for "Radio Signal Notations." The RAISIN was a guide to the physical parameters of every radio signal that the NSA was intercepting, a guide on how the NSA was gathering military communications … not just Israel's but any and every country's, including the Soviet Union's. Pollard gave his Israeli handlers every single page of the 10 volume RASIN."

Pollard also provided a year's worth of memos by intelligence officers in the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet, recording all their observations of Soviet planes, ships and submarines in the Mediterranean Sea. He turned over documents on how Navy intelligence was tracking Soviet submarines, and material revealing that one of America's most highly classified photo- reconnaissance satellites could take pictures not just straight down but from an angle. Foreign navies might think they could take a missile out of hiding once a satellite passed over but, in fact, it was still snapping pictures. Because of Pollard, they now knew this.

Israel Disavowed, Then Embraced Pollard

Originally, Israel disavowed Pollard, but has now embraced him. He was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995. By 2011, he became the focal point of a protest movement in Israel. An online petition demanding clemency quickly attracted 175,000 signatures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly called for Pollard's release, as did Israeli President Shimon Peres. When Pollard's November release was announced, Israeli Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, who headed the Knesset's Pollard caucus, welcomed the news with the Shehianu prayer that Jews utter on a monumental occasion. He declared: "After 30 years too many, I bless Jonathan and his family … I am waiting with love for him to land here." Danny Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., expressed opposition to the fact that Pollard would not be permitted to leave the U.S. for five years. "It's important that he be allowed to come to Israel immediately on his release … It's the basic right of every Jew to return to his or her ancestral homeland, the land of Israel." The Jerusalem City Council changed the name of the square near the official prime minister's residence from Paris Square to Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square.

Shortly after Pollard's sentencing, a strange campaign was launched calling for his immediate release, suggesting that he was a "political prisoner" and a victim of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Haskell Lookstein, president of the Synagogue Council of America, wrote: "Virtually every major American Jewish organization has asked for (Pollard's) release." Full-page advertisements appeared with the support of such leaders as Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, and Rabbi Gerald Zeller, president of the Rabbinical Assembly. The New York and Chicago Boards of Rabbis called for Pollard's release.

In 1989, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) called upon the entire Reform Jewish movement to express support for Pollard. In a resolution passed unanimously by its executive board, the CCAR urged Jewish and Christian organizations to "encourage the U.S. Government to re-evaluate the Pollard case." Rabbi Marc Golub, a spokesman for the CCAR, declared, "All the images about Pollard by the press turned out to be a terrible slander."

"Jewish Political Prisoner"

On April 25, 1989 a group of 15 rabbis participated in a Passover "freedom Seder" in front of the maximum security federal prison in Marion, Illinois in support of Pollard. The Seder, led by Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York, began with a brief ceremony on the front steps of the historic Old Courthouse in St. Louis, where the landmark Dred Scott case was argued in 1846. Rabbi Weiss referred to Pollard as a "Jewish political prisoner."

Shortly after the conviction of Pollard and his first wife, Anne, a Justice for the Pollards Committee was organized. It portrayed Pollard as a victim of a vindictive and anti-Semitic Justice Department. "We have before us a new Dreyfus affair," said a newsletter put out by the committee. Discussing this historic analogy at the time, Richard Friedman, writing in The Village Voice, noted that, "Unlike Dreyfus, who was framed by the French Army, Pollard is an avowed spy. Although his supporters claim his spying did not harm the U.S., there is mounting evidence to the contrary. And even if Pollard's espionage activities didn't hurt U.S. security interests, it has undermined the standing of Jews in America and undermined Israel's relationship with its most important ally. As a result, Pollard … may go down in history as having done more damage to Israel than any other individual."

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, "There is a new feeling in the Jewish community … After the Israeli- Palestinian peace treaty, the world and the Jewish community reconciled with Yassir Arafat. In light of that, at the very least, one should be able to consider commuting Pollard's sentence."

Unrepresentative Jewish Organizations

In defending Pollard, American Jewish organizations were no more representative of those in whose name they claim to speak than they were, more recently, in opposing the nuclear agreement with Iran. They have been widely criticized by many prominent Jewish Americans for embracing a convicted — and admitted — spy.

In 1993, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch was asked about the efforts by Jewish groups to gain Pollard's release. He replied: "I am a proud Jew, but I am also an American citizen. I will not condone the actions of a traitor to the United States … There is no excuse for Pollard to accept $150,000 from Israel for spying on America, and no excuse for Pollard to give Israel American codes … I think he deserved the punishment he got …"

According to Michael Ledeen, who was a consultant to the national security adviser to the president and the undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department, and to the secretary of defense from 1982 to 1986: "American Jews who are mounting an impassioned campaign on behalf of Jonathan Pollard are making a mistake, a big mistake. The man deserves everything he got, and more, both for the despicable acts he committed and for the damage he did to the American Jewish community … Actions in support of Pollard only reinforce the deadly stereotype of the Jew as an unreliable citizen. So let the Israelis worry about Pollard … Pollard should be considered one of their men. He's certainly not one of ours."

"It Bothers the Hell Out of Me"

Former Director of Naval Intelligence Admiral Sumner Shapiro declared: "We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up … and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me."

Former New Republic editor Martin Peretz, ordinarily an adamant supporter of Israel, said that, "Jonathan Pollard is not a Jewish martyr. He is a convicted espionage agent who spied on his country — a spy, moreover, who got paid for his work. His professional career, then, reeks of infamy and is suffused with depravity." He called Pollard's supporters "professional victims, mostly brutal themselves, who originate in the ultra-nationalist and religious right. They are insatiable. And they want America to be Israel's patsy."

Dov Zakheim, who served as the Defense Department's undersecretary when the Pollard case broke, says Pollard's acts made him "very, very angry," but he also found the organized Jewish community's reaction troubling. "Pollard seems to have infatuated the Jewish community, and especially the Orthodox community, that he is somehow a prisoner of Zion."

A Moral and Political Error

Professor Noah Feldman of the Harvard Law School writes: "… what relieves me is that, once Pollard is freed, we'll be spared the spectacle of respectable American Jewish leaders calling for his early release. Those requests have been harmful to the principle that American Jews can be totally loyal Americans and also care about Israel … It remains stunning to me that anyone outside Israel would think Pollard was unfairly treated … For anyone holding a U.S. passport to seek Pollard's release was, in my view, a serious moral and political error … A loyal American should — and must — react to such a betrayal with horror … For American Jews to ask that Pollard's sentence be shortened is to call into question the capacity of all American Jews to remain loyal to their country when the possibility of conflict arises."

Former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, in his book Ally: My Journey across the America-Israeli Divide, recalls that, "One senior member of the National Security Council told me over breakfast, 'As an American Jew, I believe Jonathan Pollard should get out of prison …' He paused and said, 'In a coffin.'"

When Pollard was released from prison in November, two members of Congress, Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) urged the Justice Department to permit Pollard to emigrate to Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu has personally appealed to President Obama to lift the standard prohibition on parolees leaving the United States. The Justice Department has no plans to consider this request. "They don't want to make it look like they were being too lenient," said Joseph diGenova, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Pollard. If Pollard were allowed to go to Israel, where his case has been a cause célèbre for years, diGenova said, there would be a "parade" and "events just rubbing it in the United States' face."

Million-Dollar Nest Egg

Israel's requests concerning Pollard and its own treatment of those guilty of espionage are quite different. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, writes in The American Conservative: "By some accounts, Pollard likely has a million-dollar plus nest egg waiting for him in a bank account somewhere outside the U.S., representing his accumulated earnings duly deposited for him by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad … Those who are calling for Pollard's freeing from probation both in Israel and among Israel's friends in the U.S. should look to the example of how Israel itself has treated Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal in 1986. He was drugged and kidnapped, convicted in a secret trial, and spent 18 years in prison, 11 of which were in solitary confinement. Since his release in 2004, he has not been allowed to leave Israel or speak to journalists and has been re-arrested a number of times."

Concerning the behavior of the Israeli government, Giraldi notes that, "… the focus on Pollard has obscured the duplicitous behavior by the Israeli government and its proxies in the U.S. I recall when I was in Turkey shortly after Pollard was arrested and a delegation of the American Jewish Committee came through town and met with the Consul General and later the Ambassador, insisting that Pollard was some kind of nut and assuring all who would listen that Israel would never spy on the U.S. That spin prevailed in much of the media and among the punditry, calling it a 'rogue operation,' until Tel Aviv finally 'fessed up in 1998. The fact is that the Pollard spy operation was approved at the highest level of the Israeli government and to this day Tel Aviv has reneged on its agreement to return all of the material stolen to enable the Pentagon to do a complete damage assessment. And Israel continues to spy aggressively on the U.S., ranking first among 'friendly' countries in that category."

Jonathan Pollard is, in many respects, a tragic figure. He is not a victim of political persecution or anti-Semitism but is a product of the Zionist philosophy he learned as a boy, which told him that Israel was his real "homeland" and that he was in "exile" in America. This is Israel's message to Jews in every country. After terrorist attacks in Denmark and France, Prime Minister Netanyahu urged Danish and French Jews to leave their countries and return to their "real home, Israel." To the extent that Jewish institutions in the U.S. fly Israeli flags in synagogues and tell students in religious schools that Israel, not God, is "central" to their faith, they are promoting a philosophy which alienates young Americans from their own country. It is also a form of idolatry which flies in the face of Judaism's moral and ethical tradition.

Encouraging "Aliyah"

In its 1999 Statement of Principles, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now the Union for Reform Judaism, went so far as to declare that, "We affirm the unique qualities of living in the land of Israel and we encourage Aliyah (immigration to Israel). From Birthright Israel trips sending young people on free trips to Israel to a host of Jewish organizations focusing on influencing U.S. Middle East policy, the center of attention within the organized American Jewish community has not been the traditional Jewish commitment to God but something far different.

The government of Israel spends its time, money and energy promoting this Zionist worldview.

Israel refers to itself as the "nation-state of the Jewish people." Its prime minister claims to speak not only for his own country, but for Jews throughout the world who are citizens of other countries, including American Jews. In February 2015, Mr. Netanyahu declared that he was not just prime minister of Israel but also "a representative of the entire Jewish people." (Washington Post, Feb. 12, 2015). It is unprecedented for the leader of one country to claim to speak in the name of millions of men and women who are citizens of other countries, simply because of a shared religious faith.

On March 1, 2015, just before leaving to address a joint session of Congress, Netanyahu tweeted that, "I feel that I am an emissary … of the entire Jewish people." (Washington Times, March 2, 2015). There was a harsh reaction from many American Jews. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) declared: "Netanyahu doesn't speak for me … I think it is a rather arrogant statement."

Israel Can Speak Only For Its Own Citizens

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, agreed that Israel can speak only on behalf of its own citizens "and in no way presumes to represent or speak in the name of Jews who are citizens of other countries." That was 1950. Now, in 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu has taken it upon himself to speak in the name of all Jews, whatever their nationality, citizenship or point of view.

Most young Americans who are exposed to this Zionist refrain recognize how little it has to do with truth or with the reality of their lives. Jonathan Pollard evidently believed it all and acted upon it. He paid a heavy price, but not an unreasonable one. He may have merited release after all this time, but it should be made certain that he can do us no further harm. And the motives of those who have so eagerly embraced him are certainly a legitimate subject for future examination. If he is welcomed as a hero, it will tell us a lot more about those who embrace him than it does about the flawed figure of Pollard himself.

In the end, Jonathan Pollard may indeed be considered a victim. He is a victim of Zionism, of a worldview which holds that Judaism is a nationality, not a religion of universal values, and that all Jews living outside of Israel, the Jewish "homeland," are in "exile." It promotes the idea that Israel is the real home of all Jews and that their highest obligation is to serve that state while living outside of it and eventually emigrate to it. To them, America, England, France and other countries represent only a temporary "diaspora," hardly worthy of any real loyalty or commitment.

American by Nationality, Jews by Religion

This flies in the face of the beliefs of most American Jews, that they are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Catholic, Protestant or Muslim. Their loyalty is to the United States, which is their "nation-state," contrary to the claims of the Israeli government. What would we say if other religious groups in the U.S. were in the business of alienating their members from our country? Surely, it would be considered a subversive enterprise. Sadly, Jonathan Pollard committed himself to Zionism and it destroyed his life. Let us hope that others will learn a lesson from all of this.